Derek Cole, an HVAC professional, advises against DIY thermostat installation. Wiring mistakes can blow fuses or transformers and void warranties. A professional installer offers 10 years of parts and labor coverage, versus the thermostat's 5-year manufacturer warranty.
Questions this episode answers
2023-03-16
5 years
10 years parts and 10 years labor
Chapters
I've been doing this a very, very long time and I cannot tell you how many times I have seen it happen over and over again. Us going behind a homeowner who tries to install their own thermostat sometimes ends up very bad. But homeowners are, are always looking for, for ways to save money. And the one area they often try to cut corners is, you know what? I can install a thermostat. It seems simple enough. I watched a few YouTube videos and how to articles and even took a photo of the wire, of the wire diagram for the thermostat. So how hard could it be? Well, it's, it's kind of more complicated than it looks. I mean you could accidentally touch wires, touch it the wrong direction, it gets short, you could short circuit. You could blow a fuse, you could blow a transformer, you could mess up the thermostat itself. It's more complicated. There, there's a lot of wires. If you do, if you don't know what you're doing, it's very easy to make a mistake that could cause the entire system to go down. You could avoid your warranty. I mean, it's real. If something goes wrong with your thermostat after you've installed the thermostat yourself, you may be out of luck when it comes to trying to file a warranty on your system or get it repaired under warranty, even the thermostat itself, you could void the warranty of the manufacturer warranty on that product. It's, it's not worth it, it's not worth the risk. I mean, installing your own thermostat may seem like a good fast way to save money, but you need to hire a professional. A case in point about going back to the warranty a little bit. The thermostat we install is a WI FI thermostat. You can get it at Lowe's, Home Depot, the big box stores, and has a manufacturer 5 year warranty. When we install it, when we touch it, when we bring it into home and we do, it comes with the 10 year parts in labor. So it's double the warranty and you have 10 years labor and you're paying a little bit more to have a professional stand behind it. Install makes so much sense. I mean, you got a five year warranty, no labor. We install it, 10 year parts warranty, 10 year labor on top of that for a few months more bucks. It's, it's not worth trying to save that money. It's just not worth it. It's not worth the hassle. You need to hire a professional. Again, installing your thermostat may seem like an easy way to save money, but it's not worth the risk. It's better to it's better to have a professional install it. We can do it quickly in most cases, quickly, efficiently, without voiding the warranty of your thermostat. Without voiding the warranty of your system. So please hire a professional. Do not install your own thermostat.
